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COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA: Border Killings Heat Up
Tension
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS (IPS) - The activities of Colombian
armed groups across the border in western
Venezuela are aggravating the diplomatic
conflict between the two governments, which
are ideological opposites, and some analysts
have begun to wonder just how far the
tension will escalate.
The sense of alarm has even reached their
big neighbour, Brazil, where Marco Aurelio
García, President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva's foreign policy adviser, said "It
would be a good thing for Venezuela and
Colombia to agree on a system of joint
surveillance of their common border, and I
would not exclude a non-aggression pact,"
for which Brazil could provide assistance
through "technical means," such as
surveillance aircraft.
Although Venezuela and Colombia have always
managed to patch things up after a number of
political, economic and diplomatic rows over
the past decade, "this time, the
confrontation is escalating in a more
disturbing way, because the violent
incidents have acted as fuel," María Teresa
Romero, a graduate studies professor of
international affairs at the Central
University of Venezuela, told IPS.
For nearly half a century, Colombia has been
caught up in a civil war that frequently
spills over its borders. Guerrilla movements
in remote rural areas took up arms in 1964,
and far-right paramilitary death squads with
ties to the drug trade have been active
since the 1980s.
Since 2000, Colombia – the main source of
drugs to the U.S. market - has received
heavy U.S. military aid as well as advisers
and contractors, to fight drug trafficking
and the insurgent groups, through Plan
Colombia.
Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper
(1994-1998) warned that there was a "pre-war
situation" with Venezuela because of
President Álvaro Uribe's poor handling of
the new military agreement with Washington.
The agreement, which would open up seven of
Colombia's military bases to the U.S. armed
forces, in a major expansion of Plan
Colombia, has drawn criticism from the rest
of the region since it was announced in
July.
Lula's adviser García said the Brazilian
government "does not see the accord as
appropriate. We cannot keep Colombia from
reaching its own decisions, but what are
needed are guarantees that no imbalance will
be generated in the region."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an
outspoken critic of the United States, has
said the aim of the agreement is to spy on
and destabilise his country, and perhaps
even invade and topple his government.
"Venezuela feels threatened," Samper told
Colombia's Caracol radio station.
The current escalation began in late
October, after the bodies of 11 young men,
including nine undocumented Colombians, were
found in the western Venezuelan state of
Táchira.
The young men had been kidnapped by a group
of heavily armed men in pickup trucks while
they were playing football two weeks earlier
in the town of Chururú in Táchira, four
hours from the Colombian border.
The Venezuelan government and Colombian
opposition Senator Piedad Córdoba believe
the killings may have been the result of a
clash between paramilitary groups from
Colombia operating in the area.
But Táchira's opposition Governor César
Pérez Vivas, a Christian Democrat, blamed
the National Liberation Army (ELN),
Colombia's smaller left-wing guerrilla
group.
Irregular armed groups from Colombia have
been active for years in Táchira, an Andean
highlands state that borders the
northeastern Colombian department of Norte
de Santander.
Two of the biggest roads connecting Colombia
and Venezuela run through the state.
Since July, Chávez ordered restrictions of
trade and other economic activities with
Colombia, and the border bridges over the
Táchira river, joining the Colombian city of
Cúcuta and the Venezuelan towns of San
Antonio and Ureńa have been the scenario of
frequent protests by truckers, local
merchants, shop workers and people who
depend on petty contraband for a living.
Last weekend, paramilitary supporters handed
out leaflets urging businesses in Ureńa and
San Antonio to close their doors in protest
against the restrictions on cross-border
traffic imposed by authorities in Venezuela.
The leaflets also included death threats
against some people in the area. Ten of the
pamphleteers were arrested by the Venezuelan
National Guard.
On Monday, armed motorists attacked a
National Guard post near Ureńa, killing two
members of that military force, which has
police duties.
Venezuelan Vice President Ramón Carrizález
accused "paramilitary bands trying to
position themselves in this region (Táchira)
to try to intimidate our National Guard, as
part of the destabilisation plan."
Carrizález, who is also defence minister,
said the paramilitaries "are like the
vanguard of something that is threatening
Venezuela as well as all of the countries of
South America: the installation of Yanqui
bases in Colombian territory."
Chávez accused Governor Pérez Vivas of
opening up Táchira to the paramilitaries "as
part of the destabilisation plan," and said
the governor should be tried and "will maybe
head to Peru," where several prominent
opponents of Chávez have gone into exile.
The president said he was studying the
possibility of declaring a state of
emergency on the border. He also lashed out
at the Uribe administration again, for the
military base deal with Washington:
"Colombia is no longer a sovereign country.
They have turned it into a kind of colony.
Anyone who wants to talk to the Colombian
government has to go through the White House
or the Pentagon."
In a parallel development, Venezuelan
authorities arrested three alleged agents of
Colombia's domestic secret police service,
the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad
(DAS) – two Colombians and one Venezuelan –
and announced that they would be tried for
spying on the Venezuelan military.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Tarek El
Aissami showed parliament documents that he
said were Colombian plans for spying on
Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. The Colombian
government complained that other documents,
which are confidential because they form
part of a judicial investigation in
Colombia, are in the hands of authorities in
Venezuela.
The former heads of the DAS are facing
criminal charges in Colombia for years of
spying on journalists, activists,
politicians and even Supreme Court judges.
"This espionage business is perhaps the best
demonstration of how the tension has been
ratcheted up, and may be the most serious
episode in relations between the two
countries in the past decade," Elsa Cardozo,
a professor of international relations at
the Metropolitan University, commented to
IPS.
In a statement released Wednesday, the
Colombian Foreign Ministry said "the public
order situation in Venezuela, which has
claimed the lives of a number of Colombians,
is serious."
Venezuelan Vice President Carrizález,
meanwhile, said "The paramilitary phenomenon
that was created in Colombia has permeated
our border and has intensified in the past
year."
The Venezuelan authorities are investigating
the killings of the Colombians who were
kidnapped on the soccer field in Chururú.
Lázaro Vivero, a Colombian expert on peace,
told the Caracas daily El Nacional that
"relations between Colombia and Venezuela
are in such a state of tension that anything
could happen."
Iván Cepeda, the spokesman for the Movement
of Victims of State Crimes in Colombia, said
"a climate favourable to a military
confrontation" was taking shape, while
"fabricated situations that create a public
sensation of imminent confrontation are
growing."
Romero said the escalation "has more to do
with internal, rather than international,
factors, especially in the case of
Venezuela, because of the drop in Chávez's
popularity and the fact that he has to face
the election of a new parliament in 2010."
The Venezuelan polling firm Datanálisis
found that Chávez's ratings have gradually
dropped this year, from 57 percent in
February to 46 percent in October.
But the analyst also said that as a result
of "the Bogotá-Washington agreement,
Colombia will become the biggest military
obstacle for Chávez's campaign to
internationalise his so-called Bolivarian
political project."
On the border formed by the Táchira river,
meanwhile, the temporary closure of the two
international bridges after the National
Guardsmen were killed has forced people to
cross the shallow river by foot, while the
Venezuelan military presence has been
intensified.
Pérez Vivas said he would ask the
governments of Brazil, Chile and Uruguay to
act as mediators to ward off a conflict
between Colombia and Venezuela, and the
governor of the Colombian department of
Santander, Horacio Serpa, urged Chávez to
meet with Uribe to work out the current
diplomatic and trade crisis. |
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